New approaches and modern methods of teaching foreign language

The Audio-lingual Method - The Audio-lingual Method corresponds with the USA structuralist tradition of FLT, which became the dominant orthodoxy after World War II. Its origin can go back to the seminal work of Bloomfield, who set up the bases of structural linguistics segmenting and classifying utterances into their phonological and grammatical constituents. Fries, Brooks, Rivers, and Lado went on applying these principles up to the 1970s with a close relationship with behaviorism. Bloomfield became a basic source for the Army Method, which was a response to the need of army personnel after the USA entry into the Second World War. Its main procedure was imitation and repetition.
The most important assumptions about FLT in the Audiolingual Method are the following (see Ellis 1990: 21-25):
The main concept s of Audiolingualism
1. Foreign language is the same as any other kind of learning and can be explained by the same laws and principles.
2. Learning is the result of experience and is evident in changes in behavior.
3. Foreign language learning is different from first language learning.
4. Foreign language learning is a process of habit formation.
5. Language learning proceeds by means of analogy habit-formation involving discrimination and generalization rather than analysis deductive learning of rule, as the Grammar-Translation Method.
6. Errors are the result of L1 interference and are to be avoided.
As a consequence from the approach and assumptions considered above, the main procedures put into practice by Audio-lingualism give a primary emphasis to an oral approach to FLT and focus on an accurate speech, but grammatical explanations do not have an important role. Teaching units are organized following these three methodological points: Nothing will be spoken before it has been heard. Nothing will be read before it has been spoken. Nothing will be written before it has been read. A typical lesson would have the following procedures (adapted from Richards and Rodgers 1986: 58-9):
1. Students first hear a dialogue with the key structures of the lesson, repeat and memorize them. The teacher pays attention to pronunciation and fluency. Correction is immediate.
2. The dialogue is adapted to the students' interest
3. Certain key structures from the dialogue are selected and used as the basis for repetition and pattern drills, fírst practiced in chorus and then individually. An example of a pattern drill could be this:
To elicit: There's (a man watching TV)
Teacher: There's a policeman. He's standing near a car.
Student: There's a policeman standing near a car.
Teacher: There's a girl. He's knocking at our door.
Student: There's a girl knocking at our door.
4. Students may refer to their textbook, and follow-up reading, writing, or vocabulary activities based on the dialogue may be introduced.
5. Follow-up activities may take place in the language laboratory, where further dialogue and drill work is carried on. The central unit of the lessons are, therefore, language structures, which are graded and sequenced. An example of how lessons may be organized around structures is this partial Index from a very known textbook (Alexander 1967):
-Is this your...?
-What make is it?
-What's your job?
-Look at...
-Whose is this/that...?
This is my/your/his/her...
-What color's your...?
d) Decline and assessment of structuralist methods In the 1960S the structuralist methods were widespread, but those years saw as well the beginning of criticism from different sides: first, their ideas about language and learning theories were questioned; secondly, teachers did not fill their expectations, and, finally, students had a lot of difficulties to communicate outside the classroom and sometimes found the learning experience boring and discouraging.
The main criticisms may be the next (see Roulet 1972):